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How can birds teach each other to talk? | How can birds teach each other to talk? |
(40 minutes later) | |
By Megan Lane BBC News Magazine | By Megan Lane BBC News Magazine |
Wild parrots in Australia are apparently picking up phrases from escapee pet cockatoos who join their flocks. Why - and how - can some birds talk? | |
Those strolling in Sydney's parks are being startled by squawks of "Hello darling!" and "What's happening?" from the trees. | |
Wild birds such as galahs, sulphur-crested cockatoos and corellas are repeating phrases passed on by domesticated counterparts that escaped or were released, says naturalist Martyn Robinson, of Sydney's Australian Museum. | |
The museum has received numerous reports of talkative wild birds from startled members of the public. | |
Birds are social creatures, and chicks learn to communicate by imitating the sounds made by their parents and those at the top of the flock's pecking order. | |
Unlike humans, birds do not have vocal cords. Instead, they are thought to use the muscles and membranes in their throats - specifically the syrinx - to direct airflow to make tones and sounds. | |
Not all birds can learn to make entirely new sounds. To date, only three groups of distantly related birds have been found to have this ability: songbirds; parrots such as cockatoos and parakeets; and hummingbirds. | |
"These birds are very smart birds and very social, and communication and contact is important between them," Robinson told Australia's Daily Telegraph. | |
"So the pet bird begins to say things it's been taught by its owner and the rest of the flock learns and starts speaking too, to mimic the pet bird." | |
Although parrots can make noises that sound like words, they're just mimicking sounds they find appealing, says Les Runce of the UK's Parrot Society. | |
"It may be a nursery rhyme, a football chant, a microwave pinging or a phone ringing." | |
Young birds, like human babies, learn to speak or sing through imitation, says behavioural biologist Johan J Bolhuis, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. | |
In research published in August in Neuroscience Research, he describes "a transitional period of early vocalisation, which is called 'babbling' in humans and 'subsong' in birds." | |
And, he tells the BBC News website, parrots and some songbird species can learn throughout their lives, such as the Sydney example. | |
"I have studied budgerigars - small parrots - that can teach each other to speak Japanese words. | |
"In this and other research we found that the brains of these birds are organised in a similar way to human brains with regard to vocal learning. Also, the same genes are involved in song and speech." | |
He adds that birdsong has a "primitive grammar" that is quite different from the complex grammar of human language. | |
"Bird research can teach us a lot about the development of human speech and the problems that may occur - stuttering, for instance. So, parrots and songbirds may hold important clues as to how we humans can learn to speak and acquire languages." | |
Parrot fanciers keen to teach their own pretty polly to talk may have to repeat their chosen phrase over and over. But the bird may pick it up after a single listen. | |
"Parrots have good memories and only need to hear a sound once to reproduce it," says Runce. | |
"A friend's daughter had an ingrown toenail, banged it and let out an almighty shriek. Their bird has still got that one, and that was 30 years ago." |